Our neighborhood recycling bins went from full to half-empty in 6 months

I live near a busy corner in Portland and used to see the city recycling bins overflowing every Tuesday by noon, but now they're barely half full since the new compost rules kicked in back in January. Turns out when people started putting food scraps in the green bins, it cut down on a ton of random trash and plastic bottles that used to pile up. Has anyone else noticed a drop in their local recycling bin traffic after a program change like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

barbara_taylor834d ago

Yeah, same thing happened in my neighborhood after they changed the rules here.

ryang654d ago

Oh man, I've noticed this in a bunch of different places honestly. It's like when the local coffee shop started charging 25 cents for oat milk, suddenly half the orders switched back to regular milk overnight. People really only change their habits when the system makes it easier or harder to do the old thing. I think the same thing happened at my grocery store when they moved the plastic bag bins right next to the exit - suddenly way more people remembered to bring their bags in. It's wild how little tweaks to the rules or setup can totally shift what everybody does without anyone really talking about it.